Density of Vegetation in Response to Light Coverage and Habitat

The purpose of this experiment was to find any correlation between light coverage or habitat and density of vegetation through the quadrat sampling technique. It was hypothesized that areas with more light coverage and grasslands would have a larger density of vegetation. The data was collected on October 19, 2015 and October 26, 2015 from 2:30pm to 5:00pm in York University’s Danby Woods. The weather on October 19 was sunny with minimal cloud coverage with temperatures ranging between 14-16 degrees Celsius with a slight wind. The weather on October 26 was partly cloudy with temperatures ranging between 14-16 degrees Celsius with a slight wind. The grass in the Danby Woods’ grasslands were freshly cut. Sampling was done using the quadrat sampling technique where a quadrat would be randomly placed using a random number generator to produce a number between 1-20 steps and another number between 1-4 to determine direction (1 = North, 2 = East, 3 = South, 4 = West). Once the quadrat was placed on the ground, vegetation abundance was estimated into a percentage form basing vegetation on all vegetation contained in the quadrat and disregarding the areas with no or dead vegetation. After vegetation abundance was calculated, light coverage was calculated using a 1 meter by 1 meter blank piece of cardboard as a guide. The cardboard would have sunlight shown onto it and anywhere were sunlight was blocked were demonstrated as a shadow. Sunlight coverage was then estimated into a percentage form basing sunlight as the lighter areas and disregarding areas with shadows. This process was repeated 50 times for the grassland habitat and 50 times for the woodlot habitat on October 19, 2015. This process was repeated an additional 50 times for each habitat on October 26, 2015.